Scary & Freaky stories: The Paranormal World

Swamp Children

My cousin, Ben, had a lake­side cabin where he and his par­ents would spend their va­ca­tions. I was al­ways jeal­ous of my cousin when he came back with sto­ries about his ad­ven­tures in the woods and on the lake, so I was ec­sta­tic when his fam­ily in­vited us to join them that sum­mer in Virginia.

We stayed up late our first night there, sit­ting around a camp­fire and roast­ing marsh­mal­lows. Our par­ents caught up on each other’s lives while Ben and I swapped ghost sto­ries.

A sound caught my at­ten­tion as it drifted over the lake, like laugh­ter from far off. I looked over my shoul­der, across the dark ex­panse, and saw the tiny flick­er­ing light of a fire on the far shore. I had imag­ined my cousin’s cot­tage as a se­cluded re­treat, but then I re­al­ized such a pic­turesque lo­ca­tion was sure to at­tract other rich fam­i­lies who would build their own lake­side cab­ins and enjoy their own camp­fires each night.

“Your turn.”

“Huh?” I replied stu­pidly. Ben had fin­ished his story, and I had missed the ter­ri­fy­ing punch­line. I thought about it for a sec­ond, then began my own ghostly tale.

The next morn­ing, I stepped out onto the deck and gazed out across the peace­ful water. I re­mem­bered the laugh­ter from the pre­vi­ous night, and turned to­wards where I re­called see­ing the light of the camp­fire, hop­ing to catch a glimpse of an­other cabin. I scanned the far shore for sev­eral min­utes be­fore my cousin joined me.

“Where’s the other cabin?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said, “there are a few down that way—” He pointed to­wards the north end of the lake. “You can’t see them from here, though. I think there might be one at the south end too.”

“What about di­rectly across from here?”

Ben stared out in the di­rec­tion I was point­ing. “No, there’s noth­ing over there. It’s all swamp­land that way.”

“Huh,” I grunted, try­ing not to sound too sur­prised. What had I seen last night? I had heard of swamp lights be­fore—a nat­ural re­ac­tion when gases were re­leased into the air—but what about the laugh­ter? What had I heard? I de­cided to tell my cousin about it.

“Are you sure it was laugh­ter?” he asked. “It could’ve been an­i­mals. Rac­coons, you know…

Had that been all? I could not be sure if it was just my brain try­ing to make sense of things, but think­ing back the sounds had seemed a bit off, less than human.

“We could go check it out today, if you want,” my cousin said. “Our dads said they wanted to go fish­ing, but we can use the old row­boat.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

The water sloshed lethar­gi­cally against the side of our lit­tle boat as I dipped the oars in and out of the murk. I imag­ined, even when the wind ripped across the open water of the lake, that this cor­ner re­mained still, and that the wet slap­ping against our bow was the swamp’s out­rage at our pres­ence.

“Look at that,” Ben pointed. Two sickly trees grew out of the water, and wedged be­tween the pair of rot­ting stumps was a ru­ined old row­boat. The hull was de­cayed be­yond hope, up­ended so it formed a canopy over the dark water, and I imag­ined all man­ner of frogs, snakes, and other slimy things mak­ing their soggy nests un­der­neath its pro­tec­tive dome.

“Do you think they drowned?” I asked, won­der­ing at the fate of the row­boat’s own­ers.

“Who knows,” my cousin an­swered. “Prob­a­bly.”